The last living relics of 19th century academia—otherwise known as Anthropologists– disembarked from colleges and universities all over the country last week to attend their Annual Meeting in Denver. Boarding the great metallic birds which once inspired awe and wonder among their favorite subjects from the South Sea Islands to the Amazon before they got satellite TV, they converged a thousand strong on the luxury Hyatt Regency for a few days of anthropological hijinks. While some hailed from fancy private schools like Harvard and Yale, the rest came from pedestrian public colleges and enjoyed the midweek junket courtesy of the taxpayers.
There the members of the American Anthropological Association congregated to consider the great anthropological questions of the day. Framed under the terse dialectic, “Familiar/Strange”, the conference theme went something like this:
‘Casting common sense in new light by making the familiar seem strange and the strange seem familiar is a venerable strategy used across anthropology’s subfields. It can denaturalize taken-for-granted frames and expand the horizons of students and public alike. But useful as this process of estrangement and familiarization can be, it can lapse into exoticism through “us/them” comparisons that veil historical and contemporary relations of power and powerlessness within and across societies, begging the question of the normative templates (of the “West,” of “whiteness”) that lurk behind.’
Strange and unnatural is right, but common sense has nothing to do with it. Not to beg the question, but couldn’t they have examined the process of ‘estrangement and familiarization’ and the ‘normative templates of whiteness” from the convenience of their office using Skype or Google Hangouts and then passed along the hotel and airfare savings to the ‘Powerless’? With their collective fascination with all things primitive, especially exotic tribes who became extinct due to their inability to adapt to changing technology, the Anthropologists still can’t see the writing on the wall. Hence, their deep thoughts must remain at best fixed in the 20th century, percolating in real time from the lounge of the Hyatt over a round of marguerites.
The only thing that was really ‘veiled’ here was the true Agenda of the conference. The proceedings had barely lapsed into ‘exoticism,’ before it got down to real business. The real business was to make bold political statements that would galvanize the attention of the news media, make the attendees feel like they were advancing social justice even while partying, and ultimately launch their long forgotten discipline back into semi-relevance not seen since Margaret Meade became a fixture on public TV in the 70’s. Thus, the singular and momentous news that came out of the AAA meeting (not to inadvertently stigmatize the venerable auto association or Alcoholics Anonymous) was that the eclectic gathering of aging hippies on tenure and multicultural leftists just starting out had decided to join the ranks of the international economic and cultural jihad against Israel, known as ‘BDS”.
In a ballot that should have been relegated to obscurity or ridicule, the attendees voted by a 10 to 1 margin to put to the general membership a motion to boycott their colleagues at academic institutions in Israel, who were unlucky enough to be born into a “colonialist settlement enterprise.” Perhaps due to the rarefied Rocky mountain air and the marguerites, the scholars in attendance apparently forgot that Denver was also once a colonialist settlement enterprise and so was all the land they could see from their hotel suites and beyond. As a result of the Association’s ire, amnesia and maybe blood alcohol content, their Israeli counterparts would have to be punished for this and therefore could no longer partake in the great web of collaborations, partnerships, consortiums and other mostly useless intercollegiate diversions that occupy academics in their spare time.
Given the very large sample adduced here, the verdict of the general membership on the BDS motion is a foregone conclusion. In the battle to win the hearts and minds of academia, there was never any contest. On the one hand one, you have a small modern technological state inhabited by Jews identified with the so-called ‘West’ and thereby tainted by ‘Whiteness’. On the other, you have a poorer, less educated, yet only slightly browner Muslim population allegedly ‘occupied’ and ‘oppressed’ by the former. So in the dichotomic, morally reductionist world view of American Anthropology, the Israelis didn’t stand a chance. The questions of fact, history, politics, religion and culture are largely irrelevant here and frankly a nuisance. There is a ‘good’ side and an ‘evil’ side and it is the obligation of the enlightened is to come to the rescue of ‘good’ in the pursuit of justice.
The irony of the whole thing is that in order to do its part towards the economic and cultural undermining of the Jewish state, the Anthropologists’ proposed boycott forgoes the most potent intellectual sources in support of the cause. Those would be social science departments of certain Israeli Universities which are the founts of fashionable ‘post-Zionist’ theory. These self-flagellating Israeli scholars have largely adopted the anti-Zionist views of the Left which have cast Israel as a Colonial Outpost borne in sin, whose ultimate design is to ‘ethnically cleanse’ the innocent ‘indigenous’ people.
Like some aboriginal rite of self-mutilation they studied in grad school, the Anthropologists have cut off their nose to spite their face. By boycotting the Israeli Academic Left which shares its views, they waive the right to trot them out to lend intellectual legitimacy to their anti-Zionist positions and help insulate themselves from the inevitable charges of anti-Semitism. But in the process, they have exposed what the Boycott is really about. It’s not about penalizing people for their views or actions supporting the so-called ‘Occupation’ or the policies of the Israeli government, because Israeli anthropologists are ones most likely to oppose them. It’s about discriminating against people based on who they are and where they’re from. If this boycott were directed against Americans based on their national origin, it would be illegal.
Although the AAA recently enacted a boycott against—get this—the State of Arizona over its immigration policies, it appears that they have never before boycotted the Universities of a foreign country. The anti-Israel motion is therefore unprecedented. For example, they never boycotted Turkey for occupying half of Cyprus 40 years ago. Or Morocco for annexing Western Sahara. Or Russia for lopping off a third of Georgia and the Ukraine in just the last eight years. They haven’t sanctioned their colleagues in Brazil or Columbia for dispossessing tens of thousands of indigenous people from the Amazon basin. They haven’t complained to the few surviving Anthropolgists of Syria and Iraq about the million people killed there in an internecine bloodbath not seen since World War II. But Israel is a special case which must be dealt with. The double standard is breath-taking.
It’s not clear whether or not they would acknowledge the historical fact that Israel was the target of two wars of annihilation by its Arab neighbors in 1948 and 1967 which lead directly to ‘the Occupation’ which troubles them so much today. Perhaps if Israel had managed to defend itself only with spears and slingshots, the AAA might feel differently. But notwithstanding their glaring ignorance of recent history, the all-knowing Anthropologists are apparently experts in all things Mideastern, including geography, military history and tactics, strategic doctrines and International Law. Therefore, they would not concede no one square inch to the heinous Zionist occupiers over the 1949 armistice lines–even if the territory was taken to thwart two attempted genocides. So building a suburban development on a desert hilltop three miles outside Jerusalem where the Arab Legion used to shell Jewish neighborhoods is in their eyes a crime against humanity. As most the BDS initiatives go, the AAA’s is a hostile, one-sided affair, predicated on double-standards and devoid of any historical context. It would have been simpler to just rename themselves ‘Arab-apologists.’
Since there are no actual jobs in Anthropology outside of Universities and maybe a few museums, it’s safe to say that these professors have spent their entire careers in the Ivory Tower with the possible exception of paid summers off doing fieldwork in remote places far from suicide bombers and incoming missiles If by now they have not learned the merits and discipline of scholarly balance, let’s face it—they never will. The complexities of Middle East history, religion and politics are either beyond their grasp or simply do not fit into their simplistic moral and ideological constructs. Similarly, it would a leap of faith to expect them to apply their disdain for cultural relativism equally to both sides in a conflict–especially if one side happens to have more guns and money than the other. All historical claims, grievances and competing narratives are now subject to a simple means test and a racial profile to assess each side’s degree of ‘whiteness’. The members of the AAA voting for the anti-Israel boycott have a hit a new low in academic, political and ethno-religious bias. So maybe it’s now time to give their students a break and teach them a lesson.
The lesson is about what it’s like to be on receiving end of a boycott, which is not what BDS proponents necessarily expect and are prepared to defend. In view of the blatantly discriminatory, intellectually shallow, and one-sided nature of the AAA’s actions, the following steps should be taken against their members promptly, even before the other 9000 have a chance to vote. Maybe there’s a chance some might change their minds.
1) Jewish students and others sympathetic to them should boycott their courses. Aside from being politically justified, this will spare them the embarrassment of trying to explain to job interviewers why they took them in the first place. Anthropology majors have the slimmest job prospects and lowest starting salaries of all undergraduate majors. It’s the shortest route to doing long term field work at Burger King.
2) College administrators should terminate funding for their pseudo-scholarly junkets so long as the objective is to conduct political crusades in such a brazenly discriminatory manner. The prospect of losing their travel privileges will make faculty apoplectic. This might also help to reduce next year’s tuition hike.
3) The Attorney Generals in the States where these Colleges operate should investigate whether these actions fall afoul of statewide or local anti-boycott legislation and take appropriate legal action if warranted.
4) Any and all public funding for these activities should end. Private benefactors should be persuaded not to contribute to these activities, directly or indirectly.
Of course, the Anthropologists will scream bloody murder about academic freedom and depict themselves as high-minded martyrs. There might be some debate as to whether discriminatory speech or actions undertaken against one country on the basis of double standards is covered under the exceedingly broad concept of ‘academic freedom’. I personally believe it is but that is beside the point. Academics may avail themselves of whatever free speech they like, but that doesn’t immunize from criticism or require tax and tuition payers to fund and promote their views. Accordingly, they should be made to understand that boycotts only beget counter-boycotts and learn to take their medicine like real medicine men. It’s the only effective antidote for their political voodoo.
